For many years, special aircraft have been designed and used to carry and deliver water to a fire. Helicopters or “helitankers” may be equipped with fire suppression systems that are capable of loading water from a source such as a lake or an ocean, into an onboard tank, and then transporting and dispensing the water onto a fire. Recently, the world-wide demand for helitanker fire fighting services has expanded. Helitanker fire fighting operations are now often required in areas where fresh water sources are scarce and salt water sources are abundant. Therefore, helitankers must be able to utilize sea water as a retardant without damaging aircraft components or compromising safety.
Conventional FAA approved hose or “snorkel” devices are unsatisfactory for use with salt water because these snorkels require the helicopter to hover at a level that results in rapid loss of power due to salt accumulation in the engines. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,897,829 discloses a helicopter equipped with a suction conduit that is designed to hang vertically below a hovering helicopter to load water from a source into an onboard tank. A significant problem with this type of water suctioning device is that downwash generated by the rotor causes water from the source to splash onto the underside of the helicopter. This can be a serious problem when the source contains salt water because the salt may cause parts of the helicopter to rust and corrode. Salt spray ingested into the engines can cause internal damage and result in a loss of power and eventually may cause total failure of one or both engines. Another problem with use of dangling hoses in ocean water is that the hose may bounce in and out of the water if the ocean is wavy or turbulent.
Accordingly, an object of the invention is to provide a system for loading fluid onto an aircraft from a salt water source without ingesting fluid into the aircraft engines.
Another object of the invention is to provide a conduit device for loading fluid into a tank on board an aircraft, in which the conduit device can remain partially stabily submerged in the fluid source while the aircraft flies over the source at a ground speed sufficient to stay ahead of the spray generated by the rotor wash.
Another object of the invention is to provide a fluid loading system that may be versatily employed to load fluid from different types of sources, for example, oceans, lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, in varying shapes, depths, and degrees of salinity.